Abstract

Whilst many user models can function perfectly adequately with a behavioural
impression of the user, the provision of assistance in some task domains,
notably design, requires a richer understanding, incorporating information about
the user's knowledge and beliefs. This raises a number of important and
difficult questions: How can we know what the user knows, and how can we know
that we know? We present evidence that the psychological view of human
conceptual knowledge that underpins typical approaches to these questions is
flawed. We argue that user knowledge can be modelled, up to a point, but that to
ask whether or not we can know what the user knows is to misunderstand the
question.